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Towards a Digital Spine: The Technological Methods that UK and US Publishers are Using to Tackle the Growing Challenge of E-Book Piracy
Introduction Piracy is nothing new. Debates around electronic book (e-book) piracy often make it seem as though copyright infringement is a phenomenon of the digital age. Roman authors Galen and Vitruvius complained of misappropriation of their ‘intellectual creations’ 1. However, the digital environment has made the unauthorised copying of e-books simpler and more visible. The online world has in many ways ‘democratised piracy’, making the sharing and production of multiple copies cheap and easy 2. The recent debates raging around the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act in the United States (US) have once again pushed the prevention of piracy to the top of the political agenda. Now is the optimum time to consider how, as publishers, we protect our content on the network. This paper will examine the systems that United Kingdom (UK) and US publishers, along with their representative bodies and supply chains, are using to tackle the growing challenge of e-book piracy. Through this exploration of antipiracy systems, we can see that responses to piracy generally reflect a lack of nuanced understanding about the motivations and methods of illegal file sharing, leading to unsuccessful blanket solutions to a complex problem. The following will investigate (1) The Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal, (2) Digital Rights Management (DRM), and (3) other methods in less detail, before concluding with (4) the case study of a publisher, to see what these methods mean in practice. The Publishers Association Copyright Infringement Portal The first anti-piracy system to be considered is The Publishers Association (PA) Copyright Infringement Portal (CIP). Launched in February 2009 by the representative body of the UK’s publishing industry, the CIP is a web-based portal that allows copyright owners and their ‘authorised agents’, mainly publishers, to ‘request the removal of material that infringes their copyright’.1 They do so using takedown notices. Takedown notices are legal notices sent to webmasters or Internet Service Providers (ISPs) informing them of copyright infringement and requesting the removal of infringing content. The portal largely focuses on hosting websites, but can issue takedown notices to open torrent websites. From a hosting website, users download a file from a single host, whereas BitTorrent files or ‘torrents’ are instead transferred from numerous peers. However, notices directed at torrent websites have been largely unsuccessful. The system is completely owned by the PA, and therefore by its members. The following is largely based on an interview with Mark Wharton, Director of Operations at the PA. This section is divided into four parts: (1) How does it work? (2) Current Statistics; (3) Cost; and (4) Problems. How Does the CIP Work? The CIP system is designed to focus on ‘feeder’ and ‘locker’ websites. A feeder website is one that promotes the infringing content, but does not actually store it; they provide several link options to reach locker websites, acting like a shop window. Locker websites are where the content is stored and downloaded from, such as RapidShare. This means that one title can require numerous notices to be sent out.2 The CIP can issue a takedown notice to any website anywhere in the world. It works out the jurisdiction of the infringement and sends out an appropriate notice. Unlike DRM, to be considered later, the CIP is a reactive service. It works as follows: 1. A publisher, or an author, will identify that their work is being infringed; 2. The publisher logs onto the CIP; 3. They enter the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the webpage where the content can be downloaded illegally; 4. The system identifies who it needs to serve a legal notice to, their email address, and the jurisdiction where the notice needs to be sent; 5. The system then sends a takedown notice after populating a standard Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) legal notice with the relevant information, asking the website to ‘expeditiously remove’ the infringing content.3 Websites react differently when receiving notices. Some allow the CIP to go into their website and remove the infringing content automatically; some websites remove material manually, taking anything from a few minutes to several days; some ask the CIP to send them all the notices together at the end of the day; and some have web forms which the system automatically populates with data. There is no consistency, which made development of the portal particularly complex. The first port of call is usually to issue a notice to the webmaster of the website, and if they do not respond to serve notice on their ISP.4 The CIP automatically checks every 8 h to see whether the content has been removed, and makes sure it remains removed. It does this by first seeing if the URL remains active, in most cases it will not be. However, some websites remove the content but not the URL. In these cases, the system searches for strings of words on the website such as ‘removed’ ‘infringement’ ‘deleted’, to see whether the content has been removed. The system also stores a copy of the webpage as it appeared during the automatic check, so rightsholders can see the page for themselves.5 The CIP tells the user the email address of the infringing website, the title of the work, the website the system is going to, and the country where the website is hosted. If the CIP has not seen the infringing website before, the contact information must be found manually by the support staff, and entered into the system. Once it has been entered, the system can issue the notice. It now has over 5,000 websites, of which have had to have their contact information entered manually.6 Several new infringing websites are added to the system every day, and each notice sent receivesa reply from the webmaster or ISP, making for a vast administrative task. This is how the system works at a basic level, but many other features have been incorporated into the CIP over 2 years of development. The PA wanted to make the CIP more proactive through an effective search facility. CIPSearch allows publishers to enter their titles and schedule the system to search daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. CIPSearch trawls the top feeder sites, including avaxhome.ws and ebookee.org, looking for the title and reports back the results. It does this by embedding the author, title, and ISBN information into the website’s own search facility. It then scans the results looking for infringements. There are currently over 3,400 titles and growing in the search system.7 Using this, the CIP can also automatically delete the links to infringing websites from Google search.8 Further, the bulk upload feature allows publishers to save time by uploading the information for up to 100 titles at once to the system’s search. This can be done manually, or publishers can upload a spreadsheet that the CIP then strips for URLs to serve notices. Search facilities such as these are particularly useful for smaller publishers—they make up 65% of PA members, and many do not have the time to conduct their own searches for infringing content. A further feature, designed to help publishers find new infringers, is the use of RSS feeds. RSS feeds are like newsfeeds—users register with a website, and the website then emails them, or puts on their computer screen, the latest news stories that they have registered an interest in.9 Pirate websites often offer RSS which means the CIP can use the pirates’ tools against them. By registering onto these RSS feeds, the CIP is informed every time somebody loads a new title onto a pirate website. Publishers can then search these results to find their titles. ‘DRM’, preferring to call it ‘digital watermarking’. ‘Social DRM’ has a much friendlier reputation than technical protection measures. It does not tie readers to a specific device or software. It allows the purchaser to reasonably share the content with family or friends, but if they start to make copies of the content commercially, the publisher can trace the perpetrator through the embedded information 4. While technical protection measures prevent the initial distribution or copying of content, ‘social DRM’ only allows a publisher to trace the illegal distributor once the copying has already occurred. A recent example of ‘social DRM’, which has brought it back into the public consciousness, is Pottermore.com. Pottermore is the official Harry Potter website that is currently in beta mode. Among added features and new content, the website will act as the sole proprietor of Harry Potter e-books, selling direct to the consumer. The website’s aim is to sell e-books in formats compatible with all e-readers, something it is not currently possible to do with the variety of technical protection measures used on different platforms. Therefore, J.K. Rowling and her team have decided to digitally fingerprint the Harry Potter e-books rather than encrypt Website? The fingerprinting has the information of the original purchaser, and not necessarily the file sharer. Does DRM Have a Future? With negative consumer sentiment towards DRM methods, easy circumvention, and growing industry discomfort with the systems, does DRM have a future in the fight against e-book piracy? The main problem with technical protection measures, which appears to be partially solved by ‘social DRM’, is the important distinction between consumers sharing with family and friends, and republishing for free on a commercial scale. We need to draw the line between the two types of behaviour, the former a practice that has helped countless numbers of consumers discover their favourite authors, the latter a practice that has serious consequences for the commercial viability of the industry.34 ‘Social DRM’ goes part of the way towards this aim by allowing small quantities of sharing, while providing recourse to trace a pirate. However, as previously mentioned, it has no power to prevent illegal copying in the first place. Publishers in the US appear to be more anti-DRM than their UK counterparts. Generally, the US publishing industry is seen as being 18 months to 2 years ahead of the UK, so this trend may well be a function of time. The trend is away from technical protection style DRM, and it is likely the UK will see the same move.35 As we have seen, a fundamental issue with DRM has been negative consumer perceptions. It must be seen as enabling rather than restrictive if it is to win over consumers. An interesting recent example of this is UltraViolet—a project that has come out of film studios and is supported by the music industry.36 BuyingUltraViolet media, and upgrading your existing technology to be UltraViolet compatible, enables users to play their media across a range of devices rather than being restricted to one. The official language used to sell the technology, including giving consumers ‘the enduring right to access’ their content through all devices registered on the Household Account, is very positive.37 However, users can only play the media across their registered devices within a home network boundary. This is actually very strict DRM, but created in a way that makes it invisible, and sold with positive language. The former point here is important. DRM must work effectively enough to be invisible. It does not have a future if it gets in the way. If DRM can enable machines to talk to each other, clearing rights automatically under the surface, then it becomes a powerful enabling tool. Much like Semantic Web technology, if machines can understand the meaning of information, then they can talk to each other much like people do.3 Conclusion The focal point of strength in a physical book is the spine. Copyright protection measures are the digital equivalent of a spine for e-books. Unbound pages are easily pirated, and so a digital spine is essential to strengthen intellectual Property on the network. Publishers’ first port of call should be to ensure they are meeting consumer demand for digital content, and allowing their consumers to use it fairly. There has to be a distinction between consumers sharing their content with family and friends, and republishing for free on a commercial scale. The development of the CIP has been a process of learning about the nature of e-book piracy. The system could certainly be much more proactive, but it is adaptable and communally owned by the 54 Murphy, e-mail to Blankfield, 11 July 2011.